Continuing E3’s exciting theme of deer being skewered on arrows, the Assassin’s Creed III Frontier demo – which was shown to some of the assembled ravagers of the event known as E3 – shows the new assassin chap killing a deer by creeping up on it and zapping it clean dead. That’s a great time to play a cutscene, as the developer’s narration explains. Man, I like those cutscenes. Never get tired of them. Sometimes I just sit back and watch a couple of hours of them. You only have to hit one button at the start of those ones. The little triangle button. It’s that easy. Mm.

Look, I’m being baselessly snarky, so ignore me and watch it – because he sure does kill some redcoats – and have a read of this. That’s better. Much better.

Actually, that bit with the patriot soldiers in the snow is fucking spectacular, isn’t it? Show offs.

At the risk of sounding off topic, or being harassed about posting my thoughts on an IP, am I the only guy in the world who doesn’t like this series? Many of my friends are quite excited about this, but all I can muster is a tepid “Looks okay…”

Kudos to the devs for changing the location up so drastically, though. We’ll just have to see whether they pull it off convincingly or not.

The setting is the only thing that has me mildly interested about this game. The Revolutionary War is a highly unusual time period for ANY video game, so it will be interesting to see how they handle it.

Now, hear me out before you slam it in my face. I know, WWII has been done a million times over but rarely from the point of a silent assassin.
As well as being a time of military pissing contest, WWII was famous for big authority figures, espionage, manipulation, men behind the curtain and secrecy among other things.
Taking into consideration that AC series has a thing for historical conspiracy theories, WWII would be a perfect background with abundant resources ranging from secret Nazi experiments to political propaganda.

Funnily enough, I’m the exact opposite; historical settings in Florence, Rome, Istanbul were what got me to buy the previous editions, but I’ve no desire for running around 18th century American forest. (Soz, Usanians; nothing against you guys.)

this, i really loved the Renaissance and older setting, and was disappointed at first with this new setting (though it explains how the main guy is american) but watching this vid and a few others the setting now doesn’t matter to me, it looks great

I was relatively interested in the first game, until I played it at a friend’s and realised how extremely repetitive it was. It felt like there was no depth to the gameplay or story and certainly no sense of progression.

I have no idea what the games since the first have been like, but I was put off a lot by the first. I’m now quite interested in it again, since the Rev war is a very interesting setting for me (even though I’m an Aussie). Hopefully the gameplay is less repetitive and shallow now. If they can fix that and keep their horrible DRM (of all forms; activations, online only; any of that crap) off it, I’ll buy it.

The first game was a legendary let down in my (and many other peoples) opinion. We were promised a unique setting and story driven gameplay. Instead, we were greeted by flag collection quests and race challenges.

The first one had such promise but it wasn’t until the second game – and especially Brotherhood – that the series really got going.

I would recommend jumping into Brotherhood even though you’ll have missed some of the story – although if you have time and patience, start with AC2 as you genuinely build a relationship with Ezio from that game.

The first one was misunderstood in a lot of ways due to some unfortunate design and UI decisions. The way in which the repetitive tasks played into a unique assassination each time was almost entirely lost on the player. I was nearly done with the game before I navigated through the Start menu to find all the cool stuff that was actually going on each time I performed one of those repetitive tasks. Plus, I loved the whole process of architecting and then carrying out a perfectly stealthy assassination. Sort of like Hitman. The later games seem to abandon most of the “assassin” part, and made you more of a generic 3rd-person medieval GTA killing machine. But, they did fix a lot of what was wrong with the first one, too, and added so much varied content that you couldn’t help but to have a ton of fun. Seriously though, in Brohood you’re so OP that it’s like playing an Incredible Hulk game or something. You fly and drive tanks and shoot guns and call upon your 12 assassin recruits and your mercs etc. you can walk through Rome killing everything on the screen without lifting a finger.

I wrote a review of Assassin’s Creed 2 at GameFAQs back in the day and gave it a 6/10, which was the lowest review score anyone gave the game there. I don’t think I’ve played the series much since then. It’s repetitive and unchallenging. The story isn’t interesting. About the only good things are the environment and the animations, but even those get pretty repetitive and boring.

I really felt the first one was the best, because it explored the grey amorality of the series mythos, and wasn’t afraid to give us an (initially) unlikable protagonist. Since then it’s been TEMPLARS BAD ASSASINS GOOD BRAGGGHHHHH standard storytelling, despite how near justified despite their horrific actions they were in AC1.

I’ve never actually played it, every time I see a gameplay video of any game in the series, it just really irritates me how circumstantial everything is, always seems like the AI have forgotten how to fire weapons, or use their eyes, or listen. Just looks so over the top and unrealistic with one guy taking down multiple enemies without even being seen or injured. It’s even worse in the AC3 video where he charges the British army and takes down the general unscathed.

All of those criticisms apply to just about every game and every action movie ever made. I get a kick out of it when people say a video game is not realistic enough. There’s a reason for that. People play games to avoid reality.

Obviously games are not realistic but the good ones provide a convincing illusion of reality. I can relate to Artificial’s point when watching this video, the British soldiers outside the fort fire one volley at the player for dramatic effect then walk up to him and mill around casually, waiting patiently to be chopped up by a fancy animation. All the while the most challenging opponent stands dutifully at the back of the scene waiting for the player to finish with the easy targets. Maybe this isn’t representative of the rest of the gameplay, but it certainly gives me the impression that the fights and set pieces are heavily contrived.

It seems that they are gradually improving it in that sense though, in previous games doing counters meant you were invincible to other enemies, now it seems that you often get stabbed in the back of the head when you try to perform sync-kills.
Of course there is the issue of all the other people just standing there waiting, but it’s a step in the right direction at least.

even as a game you need to be at least plausible so people buy into that. he’s a freaking assassin, you don’t charge an army head-on as an assassin (even ignoring the complete bullshit that he pulls it off). especially since it’s not even a fantasy setting like in the japanese games/anime/manga. at least there you can think “oh that’s cool, he’s a half-demon”.

i dislike the game for another reason however. and that’s the fact that everything is constricting you. want to climb a tree? hold down that button and he follows the branches. want to jump? hold down the run button as you run to a ledge. want to parkour? follow the tree tutorial.

When the first one was coming out, I was definately excited. I had heard it compared to Prince of Persia. In addition to the medieval crusade setting, and the fact that the main character was going to be one of the semi-mythological hashashins-I was pretty stoked. I expected to be executing hitman-style assassinations where blending in and not getting caught were key, and a game in which swordfights were to be avoided-sicne you were an assassin, not an army, after all. Instead, I got a da vinci code level awful conspiracy theory story, and a protagonist who could trivially cut down mobs of armroed knights by himself, and only the barest-bone level of stealth mechanics. I was very disappointed, to say the least. This most recent game doesn’t look much better-what with a trailer of Connor charging the entire British army at Bunker Hill, surviving having dozens of soldeirs fire on him, killing numerous british soldiers (including two grenadiers) in hand to hand with trivial ease and then assassinating a British officer in the midst of his army and escaping unscathed. The series truely has lost all claim to the term ‘assassin’ at this point. It’s just become another hack’n slash. Albeit oen that lets you climb trees and with criminally dumb enemies that refuse to attack you to the advantage of their numbers, or spot the obvious assassin in their midst.

I have been disappointed by both 1 and 2, but I enjoy the free running mechanics for the spectacle. Playing Assassin’s Creed is my gaming equivalent of watching a slideshow of awesome nature photos. It’s pleasant and fun, but not especially interesting or long lasting.

Every time I see a demo like this I think it seems amazing. But the actual in game feel of AC just isn’t there for me.

I’ve played the first two games and in both cases quit part way through with no real desire to go back and finish them.

With the first one I hit the standard “bored doing the same things repeatedly” problem. For the second I have no idea why I quit. I had no real problems with the game, stupid, useless tool-tips aside, I just stopped playing for the day once and never went back.

I suppose the fact that I felt no draw back to it suggests the series just isn’t for me.

I kinda liked the first one but didn’t enjoy the second one at all. I felt like I spent the majority of the game just running somewhere, and the parkour plays itself, there’s almost no skill involved. The only times you screw something up it’s because the game decided to jump off in a random direction. On top of that I didn’t enjoy the story and or the combat, I think Batman did it so much better.

The series seems like something I should enjoy, being that I still frequently return to the frenetic action in Just Cause 2, which has a similar fast/fluid movement dynamic, but AC has always appeared (in videos) to be a little too contrived for me to even bother.

It seems like one of those games that works hard at the illusion of player skill, when in actuality it’s a constant stream of choosing how to kill enemies that will generally die no matter what you do. I love good stealth mechanics, but being hidden because you’re on a deciduous tree branch–in winter–seems a bit off.

It does sound like they’ve genuinely tried to give it an organic feel, so maybe I’m totally off. It certainly looks pretty, and the setting doesn’t suck, but trying a demo is the best I can do for this one.

I have the first 4 games and have only played the first 2. I just can’t get past the way the games feel like they play themselves. One button freerunning, stealth systems that are meaningless because you can just hack your way through everyone using counters. If I want good freerunning I’ll stick to Mirror’s Edge; for zipping around stealthily there are the Arkham games. On the other hand, I actually don’t mind the overall story in the AC games; I just wish the gameplay held up its end of the bargain.

I am a fan of the series, but I am not surprised that there are also gamers who do not care about it. Just like I do not care about Cod, Blackops , or whatever else like that is out there.

For me the meticulously recreated ancient cities were a huge, huge part of the attraction, as I am crazy about the architecture and atmosphere. And I am a huge fan of open world games (especially in cities) and I love stealth games. So Assassin’s Creed has a lot to offer to me.

I love the fact this new AC is more open again than Rome and Constantinople from the previous AC’s, but I am a bit worried about the lack of cool architecture in AC3.
But I will certainly add this to my collection if UBI does not infect it with a ridiculous DRM.

That’s a good point. It was really cool to recognize places and remember facts about them when viewing photos from my friend who studied abroad in Italy a few years ago. She was surprised I recognized them and knew some of the history, so it was nice in that it allowed me to puff up my feathers. But more than that, it meant we had more of a connection over these places. I had a better understanding of what I was looking at, what it felt like to stand next to these things.

That was really, really, cool.

Also, I got to make wry comments about how easy or difficult various buildings the the photos were to climb or how many archers inhabited them.

But cool as that was, it just wasn’t enough of a game. It was a really cool experience, but I just didn’t feel like there was a lot I needed to input to experience it. Which isn’t bad … it’s just a lot of effort and money to put into the plethora of gamey systems of the AC series with me getting so little out of them. I meant that for the developers, but that sentence also works with respect to me playing the game.

I would enjoy these games so much more if I just got to play as the actual stars of the game, and not as Desmond lying down on an animus and unlocking their memories. I hate when I am having an awesome time running around some ancient city and stabbing people and all of the sudden some sci-fi element kicks in, and the city is digitally rebuilt right in front of me, and I’m magically in another location. Or when I get pulled out of the action entirely to take control of Desmond in some lame scripted Heavy Rain-like sequence where I just walk around a lab pressing buttons. Those parts of the series are so weak.

I’m in the middle. I thought it added charm to the series, and made all of the silliness and seriousness of the not-quite-there “historical” plots less incongruous with the gorgeous and detailed locations. It excused obviously game-y things that improved the experience (haybales made climbing more fun because you didn’t have to climb down … somewhat dampened by the fact that climbing was about as difficult as walking so all it really saved you was time which could still be worth it to some players).

But at the same time, I really like the idea of a looser franchise tied together by intrigue and plotting and whatnot without the explicit connection via Desmond. I like the idea of a more rigorously intricate historical setting (not less batty with the conspiracies or more realistic … just that the plot details and the characters fit as nicely into the historical periods as the visuals and architecture do). I feel like the animus conceit could have been more fun as a surprise at the end, or either integrated with or replaced by a more traditional frame narrative in which the Assassins explain the scoop to a snarky, disbelieving Desmond only following along becasue he can’t deny that people are indeed shooting at them with guns and this seems to be a nice place to hide until he can escape both the weird paramilitary “templars” and these loony “assassins.”

I guess I liked the general tone it created. It was Dan Brown crazy, minus the hubris. I just didn’t enjoy the actual implementation and I disliked the game-play ramifications even if they were at times somewhat clever ways of incorporating interface with fiction (mostly it wasn’t either clever or bad, it just was).

Yeah, I found that especially annoying in the second one. Desmond needing to learn to use the abilities is all well and good but I have been using the same abilities for a few hours, leaping about the rooftops of a city for fun. Suddenly having to run a simple little obstacle course or whatever seems like unnecessarily taking the fun out of it.

I like the fact it is showing R2 being the gun trigger this means after 4 games the movement controls are actually being overhauled. That has easily been the most frustrating thing for me in the recent games, having to hold down three buttons (or 2 and a thumbstick) to jump felt incredibly clumsy.

News of all the DLC has pushed any purchase back to when I can get all the content at once though.

I had to play AC on mouse and keyboard which was pretty painful. I was then able to use the Xbox pad on 2 and Brotherhood which made the games much better(apart from the random jumping off random angles to the floor below). But I recently bought Revelations and found that they have changed the controls for that game and it has been very annoying. Climbing to the top of the observation towers to synchronise normally has me firing off a couple of shoots at nothing, they changed the button for doing that. I hope this is not a 3rd change for me. :(

I loved it on keyboard and mouse until I tried to leap between two non-parallel buildings.

But other than minor issues when trying to leap away from certain types of buildings, I thought it worked fine. The gamepad certainly made jumps easier and it’s always nice of have continuous speed adjustment to avoid the ol’ stop-n-go when you can’t walk at the same pace as NPCs.

I used to love these games, but then I played Revelations which was just bloody awful and not needed.
After playing that, I said that the AC team needed to drastically change the games, and NOTHING I’ve seen of this one makes me think they’ve got anywhere near achieving that.

The first time I played through AC:R I thought it was a bit odd and didn’t quite gel, but when I played through it again afterwards I really enjoyed it and think it is a very worthy addition to the series…

AC:1 was great story-wise but was overly repetitive.
AC:2 and AC:B improved gameplay and the story was awesome…

Have to say that the AC series is easily one of my favourite game series ever… Gameplay is a bit too easy but it has one of the more involving stories out of any game in a long time…

I guess they started a fight to show off the fighting. I could see no reason why you couldn’t simply walk past those guards. I’d guess at some optional objective making it easier on the attackers or something.

Really though, people need to shrug of the notion that this series was ever trying to be Hitman with bows and arrows. It’s pretty much a James Bond simulator. You run around and do cool stuff. There’s a place in the world for this kind of stuff too you know.

I figured it wasn’t that sort of game when I found out how easy it was for Altair to cut down entire groups of armroed knights without any real trouble-in a series in which the main character was suppsoed to be an assassin, there really isn’t enough to punish running in like Rambo. As you said, there is place for this sort of thing, but I can’t help feel disappointed with the direction the series took.

Did it bother anyone else that with the fort’s front gate open there were gunshots and the sounds of fighting / people dying just outside the fort and yet the people inside kept acting as if everything was fine and nothing was going on?

That’s been bothering me since the first AI capable of responding to sounds appeared in games. I too would expect better of a game with this much love and artistry going into so many of it’s parts, but such is the way of things.

Part of it, too be fair, is that most games compress a sense of space. ARMA is the only game I’ve played that really captures a sense of distance and that’s because it’s an actual piece of land ripped out of real imagery. But even taking that into account, Assassin’s Creeds past have been incredibly silly about what crowds of folks will and won’t let you get away with. This one seems not to have fixed it.

The only bit about the lack of subtlety that gets me is that you wear the most distinctive, I’m-a-fucking-Assassin-guys outfit the dev team could dream up, rarely even changes anything but the color scheme, and just sitting down on a bench gets the Watch off his case. And no one bats an eye as he looms over a dead body with his knife out and bloody, simply because they never saw him actually stab the guy. To a certain extent it’s becasue of AI limitations, but part of it’s prioritizing the snow physics and the cape simulation.

I’m fine with a James Bond simulator in place of a historical/sci-fi mash-up successor to Hitman. But a few of the AI tricks from Hitman would be nice.

What AC has always done well is free-and-fun movement. Other games have been similarly fun in that regard (Spiderman Web of Shadows, Prototype, Infamous (sortof, once you get all the movement powers) but they seem to be falling off the “sneaky” part of things.

The character navigation and animation tech here is truly ridiculous. I never thought I’d see game characters cope so well with weird, random terrain. Hope the research doesn’t get lost and other developers can learn from it.

I think it’s really nice to see, especially the climbing. The wider adoption of “you can climb up stuff” in the industry in general, from earlier stuff like Shadow of the Collosus, and just the general evolution of “your legs don’t clip through the ground” is probably more interesting that all the graphical changes in brown and bloom.

You guys might want to check out the Battlefield-esque military sim A New Zero, by crypticsea/Alex Austin:

He’s working on full procedural character animation for his characters, along with all sorts of other cool physics stuff: macroparticle-based aerodynamics, procedural destruction, vehicles made of smaller components.

Of course, there’s the Euphoria engine used in Rockstar games, but no-one else seems to have licensed it and it doesn’t really go so far as acrobatics or climbing, just simple navigation.

‘Connor’s heritage gives him access to new weapons, such as the bow.’
I want to let him down gently, but-
Bows are not new weapons, and the idea that it’s because he’s half-native american (or possibly half-english) and hence can use a bow is very silly. Did the guards have access to bows in ACII because of their custodial heritage?

Ok, it wasn’t that bad. Just a nitpick and other things look real cool.

Now the major grump:

Why can we not fire a pistol into the air to scare the wolves away. I doubt a Native American, that familiar with the forest, would so callously and carelessly lay waste to forest predators without a very good reason. Likewise, I would wager the first shot would terrify the wolves and send them fleeing. Can we please stop the senseless slaughter of wildlife in open world games? Please?

Native Americans in New England were not all (or mostly) post-materialist environmentalists. While some of them had animist belief systems or theories about forest health and the natural order that led to the sorts of habits you implied … the classic New England forest with it’s broad pathways and scant underbrush comes in large part due to man-made fires. This improved hunting and living space in such forests, or so goes one of many theories as to why these intentional modifications occurred.

Similarly massive and intentional modifications of the ecosystem, either the landscape or the food chain, occurred across America long before the arrival of Europeans and their awe at the untouched, natural beauty of the landscape that to its inhabitants was filled with signs of a powerful human disruption–so different as to be invisible to Europeans but by no means small or friendly to the “natural” order of things.

Your point about there being other ways to scare wolves off is a better point. And your point about needless slaughter of wildlife in open world games is an exceptional point.

The animation and everything is very detailed and cool (although some of that tree stuff seems phony because of the momentum involved).
But sometimes all that detail does it make it even more plain that your opponents are conveniently blind and deaf idiots. Including deer now!
It’s a bit churlish to point this out about a game, but I always find that interesting.

The movement and combat all looks fluid and responsive, so I’d imagine this to be really fun to play. Too bad the textures, lighting, and a lot of the animation looks really shit for a 2012 game. I mean, DAMN, did you look at those shadows?

Native American!sue is suddenly biotic! Seriously, did no-one notice that half the movements in this video are PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE?! At least the previous games tried for the slightest bit of plausibility. This one, not so much.

I just watched the video, and I’m not seeing it. The round the tree one is a bit suspect, and some of the animal animations have a few issues … but hyperbole noted as a figure of speech, I’m still not noticing a general lack of realistic movement. Let alone compared to past games.

Am i the only person who feels like that the Assassin’s Creed franchise is one that is a direct result on a push on consumers (via marketing) rather than it is because of the qualities of the game itself? I honestly can’t get over how popular it seems to be but how completely just above-average the game experience is. I’m trying to look at it objectively rather than my personal opinion (i’d criticise it much harder if that was the case) but it seems to be quite a banal franchise that gets away with looking pretty, being streamlined and having an open-world than it is unique, innovative or pushing the boundaries of gaming.

It’s become a huge hitter, up there with Halo or Call of Duty right now, and i can’t understand it at all.

I like the way this game is starting to look a bit like an Elder Scrolls game. Now that would be a great crossover. The open world structure of Elder scrolls mixed with the combat / populated areas of Assassin’s Creed.

Not trying to bitch or anything, the demo looks amazing, it’s just that, IMO, snow should fall off tree branches when you pass through them, it’s kind of awkward to see the snow act like paint on tree surfaces.